SteelSeries Simraceway S1 Steering Wheel Review

The Simraceway S1 Steering Wheel from SteelSeries is a unique peripheral made for people that do not have enough space in their gaming room to keep a full racing setup. The wheel comes with shift, throttle and brake paddles in the back and enough programmable buttons on the front for delivering a much better experience than using a regular Xbox360 controller. A nice addition is the RPM LEDs, but these will function only if the games also support it (F1 2011, Simraceway). The S1 also supports an optional wheel stand, which hopefully will become available in the near future.

Packaging, A Closer Look

The SteelSeries SRW-S1 wheel is packed inside a medium-sized cardboard box with a transparent plastic window in the middle, which allows us to see all the product details even before unsealing it. Some of the features are also explained on the front:

Additional product information is to be found on the side:

This wheel was built with the Simraceway game in mind, tested with the team at Simraceway Performance Driving Center, Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, CA and on the back side of the packaging we will learn some of the details about the driving simulator along with the offered in-game currency:

What we can find inside the box? Well, not a lot besides the wheel and a small sealed plastic bag:

The previously mentioned bag comes with the SRW-CURRENCY card and a leaflet with more details about the wheel:

On the back of the card we will find a scratchable area for revealing a code which will give us $10 of in-game currency; the code also has an expiry date, so be careful not to insert it when it will be too late:

The small guide teaches us how to install the Simraceway game and how use the SRW-S1 steering wheel; here we will also learn that no software is supplied inside the box and that all should work without a hitch from the start:

SRW-S1 offers plenty of configurable buttons on the sides, easy to access while driving; some dials are also present on the bottom area, for other customizations like assists inside the racing game:

The default buttom mappings are written on its body; the top left side has the Pit Request, F. Brake, R. Brake, Look Back, Look Left and Lights buttons: